Sons of Perdition: Those who rebelled with Lucifer in the Preexistence. The term can also apply to Mormons who willfully and deliberately deny the Holy Ghost and the truth of Mormonism while knowing it is true. This sin will not be forgiven and will result in outer darkness.

“Thus saith the Lord concerning all those who know my power, and have been made partakers thereof, and suffered themselves through the power of the devil to be overcome, and to deny the truth and defy my power–They are they who are the sons of perdition, of whom I say that it had been better for them never to have been born; For they are vessels of wrath, doomed to suffer the wrath of God, with the devil and his angels in eternity” (D&C 76:31-33). Explained tenth President Joseph Fielding Smith: “The sons of perdition are those who have had a knowledge of the truth, have known that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, have had the testimony of the Spirit of the Lord, the Holy Ghost, and these things have all been revealed so that they know they are true; and then they turn against them and fight them knowingly. Sons of Perdition are to be cast out with the devil and his angels into outer darkness. Into the telestial kingdom will go, according to that which is written here in this revelation, the vicious, the unclean, the ungodly” (Conference Reports, April 1942, p. 27).

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